While you were away...

So... it's been a while.
Sometimes, one has nothing to blog about, which can be weird because a lot of stuff has happened since that last angry blog back in 2011. A LOT.

1. We set up a website. 
2. We recorded a new song, In Silence, and made a video for it.
3. We released our sophomore album, Hello Light
4. We went on a city tour! On a mobile stage! Very cool :-)
5. We released the second single, and here's the video.
6. Both songs appeared on a Top 10 countdown.
7. We're expanding our tour.

This process has been so overwhelming, that words have been a bit inadequate to describe the intensity of the emotional roller coaster that we have been on.  So, does it make sense that it was impossible to blog about?

However, some things are easy to talk about in this endless pursuit of happyness, and three of those things are "happiness",  "Kill Bill" and "numbers".

Happiness. We all want it.

Kill Bill. Was just an amazing movie.  And while the six main characters were absolutely coolishly bad mofos, "Deadly Viper Assassination Squad" is a silly name.  Which is quite the situation we have in "Murfy's fLaW"

Numbers. Two important numbers for Murfy's fLaW are 312 and 1496. Why? Both these years were leap years. And in 312 AD Constantine I marched into Rome, fished Maxentius' body out of the Tiber and decapitated it.  Then in 1496 AD Leonardo da Vinci tested a flying machine.  Unsuccessfully.

Those exciting facts aside, we love 312 and 1496 because this is the number of people who've taken time out to follow and like us on twitter and facebook respectively. We appreciate you all - yes, even those of you who've only followed us so that you can try to sell us earplugs and specific-body-part-growth hormones.

Seriously though, it's you guys who keep voting for our songs, interacting with us, and making us feel that despite the lows, there are some people out there who give a damn, so thanks.

And as a token of our appreciation, here's a picture I drew of the band pretending to be members of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad! 

(And in the interest of full disclosure, this blog was all about justifying why I should throw into the public domain a badly drawn sketch of Murfy's fLaW pretending to be members to the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad.)

No such thing as bad press. Really?

Strangely, this was something that I had been warned about.

A couple of years back, I'd attended a seminar on making money in the Creative Industry.

Eric Wainaina had just given an inspirational talk on the business side of the Music Business, and was taking question. Murfy's fLaW had just had our first mention in the a local paper. The writer managed to spell the band name wrong, get the wrong number of band mates, and blessed the mentioned ones with a whole string of made-up names and features.

"So," I asked Eric, "How can you ensure the press get the details right?"

Eric said, "You can't".

Fast-forward to the present. 1.5 albums, dozens of gigs, a few blurbs and a multitude of scandals later, and I wonder why I still felt let down when I read this article.

http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/mag/InsidePage.php?id=2000036217&cid=616&

Pretty innocent, you might think.

YOU'RE WRONG!

All along, we were led to believe that this would be an article about the "band". They gave questionnaires for all of us to fill, took lots of band photographs, and individual photos as well.

Then, the article comes out, and they've gone ahead and edited 9ine out of it.

I get that people think it's really amazing that there are so many girls in the band. Power to women and what not. And yeah, Murfy's fLaW is made up of pretty amazing people who've overcome pretty amazing things and formed a band. And sure, 5 of them are girls, but 1 is a guy and it's this grouping that makes us as awesome as we are.

So yes, I get upset when they'd rather just blindly ignore the one guy in the band, just coz he's "ruining" a perfectly nice "girl band" picture.

Get over it people. We are not a girl band. We are a band with girls and a guy. If you want to take pictures of pretty girls, you've got Spice girls and The Moipei Sisters. (Pause. No disrespect to them). Does the world need another all-girl grouping so desperately that you'd kick the boy out?

I guess what bothers me is that they were so sneaky about it. Why go ahead and involve 9ine in the entire interviewing process if they were going to edit him out? There wasn't even a token "whole band" photograph, just to appease my troubled heart. (Let alone the trouble hearts of all the lovely female flawbots out there who only watch the band coz they like 9ine). The whole thing ended up leaving a pretty foul taste in my mouth.

They say there's no thing such as bad press. Yay for free publicity etc. But man, sometimes it feels like crap.

(DISCLAIMER: Written by a highly-emotional band mate. Views of the writer do not necessarily reflect the views of Murfy's fLaW).